My August 2019 Hair
One of the major things this hair journey, which started in January of 2018, has ever taught me was I thought I know my hair well. Turns out, I did not really know her. Given that I know facts about her like she is straight, she is thick, she is coarse — these details weren’t enough.
Being surrounded with people who encourage and uplift is very important for me so for the last few months, I took time and joined a couple of hair groups. Last week , I joined a message board. While these avenues have been great places to discover hair-positive people, these also have been good hair care routine sources for my hair and for myself to a different level.
Hair care is a trial and error. There’s no straight line. It’s not linear at all. Bad hair days are definitely unavoidable.
There are just a lot of information about hair care. In fact, when you look for “How To have Long Hair” keywords on Google alone, it will give you approximately 4,760,000,000 results as of this writing.
How to have long hair faster
Don’t cut it! As oppose to some narratives emphasizing that we need to have the ends trimmed at least once a month, in my opinion, is ideal only for hair who got dry ends.
Gurl, if you have dry ends and they look dull and horrible, please chop them off! No ifs, no buts!
I often feel bad every time I ask my hairdresser to make a little trim on my ends but good thing she knows my goal, and she knows how to cut my hair without disturbing the length.
In hair community, we call this Dusting. Dusting is a technique where a itsy-bitsy tiny length is trimmed from the hair. I really did not know the term until someone in the hair group mentioned it.
My latest trim was done in June 2019. Hoping not to do it again soon but I am confident to say that my ends have been amazingly healthy.
Buy Sulfate-Free Products! And I quit using products that have Keratin in it too (please continue reading below as to why I don’t like Keratin at the moment).
When I started changing hair products, I noticed a big difference. You should give it a shot if you feel your current hair products don’t serve anything good already but disappointments.
Use wooden combs! I have two combs: One for hair fall and one for massaging my scalp. The advantage of using a wooden comb is it can distribute your natural oil that your scalp is producing. It’s like helping the oil to reach the length esp the ends.
Remember. The ends are the oldest part of the hair and they tend to break more than the hair from the scalp. This is why most hair products like hair conditioner and hair oil instruct user to put it ideally on the ends.
Another tip is to section your hair before combing. This all depends on your hair thickness or its length. These days, I section my hair into six sections. Sometimes four but me being scared of breakage and fall outs, I have been careful, so six sections have been the safest for me.
And oh, don’t comb it while it’s wet. Hair is too fragile and prone to breakage when it’s wet. Please be careful.
My #1 Hair Tip
Know your hair. I know it’s too basic but if you know your hair, you will have a basic idea what your hair needs. What she wants.
Some important things that I’ve discovered about my hair:
I made an assumption that my hair has a protein buildup. I learned that Keratin is a protein. Keratin is good on most hair types but since most products in the market have Keratin in them, it’s easy to assume that probably this is why my ends are breaking.
Probably this is the reason why my hair is not shiny (although I am still figuring this out but I am getting there!)
I figured my hair was having too much of Keratin already. So I stopped using them for a while until my hair is balanced.
So how to flash protein out of hair? Answer: Clarifying shampoo.
My hair is low porosity. This is one of the things I did now know at all. I learned it through reading a lot of hair articles. When hair is low porosity, hair is having a hard time to lock moisture.
In my case, this is true. When I put on hair oil or leave in, they do nothing on me. They just absorb and disappear after few minutes. So I took an effort to find products that have moisture and hydration. My hair is damn thirsty!
My hair loves heat. It needs warm. In the hair groups I joined, I looked for gals who have coarse, thick, stick straight, and low porosity like mine to ask for hair tips.
I met a wonderful woman and she shared a lot of tips. One was our hair type loves heat! To be honest, I love blow drying my hair but because of these hair tips I always see in hair care routine articles, I tried to stay away from blow driers.
But the thing is: My hair is coarse, it’s ridiculously strong so a blow dry is something that it can deal with from time to time. Of course, I don’t fry my hair like there is no tomorrow. After shower, I let it air dry it first then afterwards, blow dry in low settings. Casually. Nothing tedious. Inversion method sometimes not. I also avoid my ends. After that, I put a tiny amount of hair oil on ends to lock moisture. Nothing extravagant. Sometimes I skip oil.
Keep growing!
